Brokers | The Broker Desk

28 Aug

Decision · 7 min Broker Onboarding Funnel Benchmarks: Signup to Funded Account There is no public benchmark for signup-to-funded conversion in CFD brokerage: no broker, CRM vendor or regulator publishes the rate, so the number most quoted in planning meetings is the one with least evidence behind it. What is verifiable points at the two stages where the funnel leaks most: identity verification and first funding. Jumio's 2026 study of 8,003 consumers found 38% would choose a less secure or less convenient platform to avoid identity checks altogether, and one in three would avoid a platform entirely rather than provide personal data for age verification (Jumio 2026 Online Identity Study). The enforcement record runs the other way: the FCA fined Starling Bank £28,959,426 on 2 October 2024 after its automated screening had, since 2017, checked customers against only a fraction of the sanctions list (FCA press release, first published 2 October 2024).

24 Aug

Primer · 11 min Overnight Japan Equity CFDs With Knock-Outs Are Here. The Tokyo Close Just Became a Product-Design Problem. FOREX.com has launched what it claims is the first combined service for trading Japan single-stock CFDs and knock-out barrier features during the hours when the Tokyo cash market is closed. The commercial reading is straightforward — more instrument choice for clients — but the operational reading is the one that matters: every CFD broker that lists Japanese equities now has to decide whether the 15:30 JST close remains a hard boundary of its own product, and that decision forces real work on gap risk, barrier-event detection, corporate-action processing, and the regulatory line between a stop order and a product feature.

23 Aug

Primer · 11 min Warsh's Jackson Hole Debut Turns the Fed into a Pricing Unknown Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh will deliver his first Jackson Hole speech as chair when the Kansas City Fed opens its annual symposium in Grand Teton National Park later this week, Forex Factory reported on 23 August 2026. The consequence is a repricing, not a speech: the market's working assumption that the 3.50%-3.75% policy rate inherited from Jay Powell remains the base case for the rest of 2026 is now contestable, and every dollar-denominated swap rate, CFD funding charge, and margin threshold in a brokerage stack prices against Warsh's on-the-record views, which are more hawkish than his predecessor's.

21 Aug

Primer · 11 min Washout in Washington: When the Treasury Talks the Dollar Down and Rates Do Not Move On 21 August 2026, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled down on the weaker-dollar message he has pressed since taking office, and the FX market sold the US dollar accordingly. The decisive detail in the Forex Factory report is not that the dollar slumped, but that Treasury yields were little changed. For broker executives and dealing desks, that combination is a red flag: the dollar moved on political credibility, not on a repricing of Fed policy.

14 Aug

Editorial · 3 min What This Publication Is For Most of what is written for brokerage operators is written to sell them something. That is not a complaint — it is the economics of a niche where almost nobody is a reader and almost everybody is a prospect. But it means the useful information arrives wrapped in a pitch, and the reader spends more effort discounting the source than absorbing the content.